Chimps ‘R’ Us: So Are Rats
Suki Falconberg Ph.D.
January 04, 2007
Nature, an American PBS series, just carried a show called “Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History.” Allison Argo, its writer, director, producer, and narrator, did a fairly competent job of showing how chimps have been exploited and mutilated by biomedical research. Overall, the show is moving, and, for the general public, should have an impact on anyone with a heart.
I have a few objections to attitudes expressed here and there, like the idea that the “Air Force” Chimps ‘gave their all’ and now deserve to be ‘retired.’ ‘Gave’ implies voluntary activity and these captive chimps were just that, captives, prisoners. A chimp in captivity has had her life taken from her. She didn’t just hop in there and say, “Yes, torture me for medical research!”
Argo implies that medical research on animals has been beneficial for humans, a highly debatable viewpoint. In reality, our sick species has not become any healthier by torturing animals: setting dogs on fire, sewing the eyes of kittens shut, forcing rats to run until they die of exhaustion, engineering mice who are born with cancer—all of this brings in big grants and funds for scientists, but it is not ‘curing’ us of our illnesses. (Please remember that every time you donate to all these breast cancer organizations and all these AIDS research groups, and to charities like the March of Dimes, you are funding animal torture and not necessarily helping humans.)
Argo valorizes the enslaver of Ham, the first chimp NASA forced into space. Ham, all affectionate, is supposedly like a beloved son to this man who used and exploited him. It made me sick to see this poor chimp stuffed into his space capsule, and to imagine the terror he must have felt.
The show does uncover a bit of about the chimps’ tortured lives. We see them tattooed like pieces of equipment, chained in small cages, strapped down with leather as they are injected and experimented upon. We also see crash tests using live chimps and their limp bodies, either dead or fearfully injured, as they are carried from the cars.
But this is only a small glimpse into the torture they’ve endured at our hands. I would like to have seen some of the footage of Jane Goodall’s visits to facilities where chimps, and also monkeys, are housed in cages so small they have gone insane. But I suppose Argo was aware that her audience was the general public, not animal rights activists, and that she could only show so much torture—too much would make the show unwatchable for the average viewer.
A lot of the show focuses on the chimps going to sanctuaries, like Fauna Foundation and Save the Chimps, and this is good. There we see just how damaged the poor animals have been. The camera shows close-ups of their ravaged and mutilated bodies and faces. These chimps look drained of life, and not at all like the vibrant, courageous, bursting-with-energy ones we see in shows that film them in the wild.
Gloria Grow, founder of Fauna Foundation, describes the long-term impact, what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, on these chimps, of having been locked up in small concrete-and-steel spaces for their whole lives. She talks about Billy Jo, a chimp who was experimented on for years at LEMSIP, a New York University research facility. The poor fellow underwent 40 liver biopsies, among other things, and “in the lab,” she says, “he would shake his cage back and forth, trying desperately to prevent anyone from approaching.” In his distress, he also chewed off some of his fingers.
At her sanctuary, he was plagued by anxiety attacks. Sometimes aggressive, at other times caring and gentle, his emotional life was as complex and tortured as that of any human who has suffered.
One concern of the chimps’ sanctuary caretakers has been to give them some peace before they die, since they have endured so much. It is not always easy since the chimps are not just in terrible mental shape, but also plagued by physical problems after years of being tortured in labs. Some only briefly enjoy the freedom of grass and air and sky before they die. It is something, at least, for them to have a few days or months of gentleness and freedom.
The closing scenes of the show are especially touching because we see some of the chimps finally on grass after years of living behind bars in concrete-and-steel cells. There is a Rilke poem about a panther in the zoo who paces constantly and can no longer tell the difference between the bars and the air outside the bars. “It seems to him there are/a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.” One of the chimps at the sanctuary creeps out into the air for the first time in his life. So accustomed is he to concrete, that he is afraid of the grass. He stays on a small strip of sidewalk, right outside his cage door, unable to move across some imaginary line of imprisonment.
Then there is another chimp who does move out, far beyond that line. He goes into the grass, and climbs a tree. There, he spends the night under the moon.
I am glad to see PBS carry a nature/animal show with sensitivity. This one is a good contrast to the scientific series that features Alan Alda. In one episode, Alda visits a scientist who experiments on monkeys. As Alda and the man laugh and joke together, we see the monkeys pacing, pacing, pacing, in the background, in their small cages. Gone insane, long ago.
In another episode, Alda visits a man who has been doing obesity experiments on mice for 30 years, and being handsomely funded to do so, in hopes he will uncover something about overweight humans. (Why he doesn’t just study obese humans, of whom there are many, is a real mystery.)
The same confinement insanity for these poor mice—only maybe worse. With their small, jumpy nervous systems, mice and rats and hamsters (all of these are used in medical experiments) have a much harder time being caged than do humans, or chimps. They go insane faster.
All living creatures want the same things: some of the more obvious necessities are food, safety, space, freedom from pain. I’m glad this show on chimps uncovered the misery they experience in captivity. Now let’s see another Nature episode about how mice and rats and other small animals suffer from their captivity in medical research—how they convulse and bleed from their orifices when injected with lethal substances-- how mice, inflicted congenitally with cancer, carry around tumors bigger than they are; how rats, spinal cords artificially severed, drag themselves around like sad cripples; how hamsters have all their feet amputated so that scientists can discover whether they feel ‘helpless,’ or not, in this pitiful state. (‘Pitiful’ from my point of view; a ‘necessary torture’ from theirs? I don’t know. I do not understand how they think.)
I have some personal experience with rats, having rescued four throwaways at one time, and so I know that they suffer and bleed, and that they also experience joy and pleasure.
I took in four girl rats, brown, because the person who bred them didn’t think they were cute enough to sell as ‘pets’ (that sad word we have labeled some of our captive companions with) and so she was going to dispose of them as snakefood.
I called the girls Wendy, Moira, Angela, and Darling. Wendy was bold and adventurous. Moira was a lazy couch potato, preferring to sleep and eat all the time, instead of exploring all the closets and boxes and other places I gave them as playgrounds. Darling was just that, quite a little darling in that she was the most affectionate of the four. She would groom me by licking my toes and my wrists and corn-rowing my hair with her teeth (rather painful). Angela was perhaps the most endearing of the four because she was very timid. When I wore a long-sleeved shirt, she liked to ride around in it: her furry, warm body would rest against my arm and I could see her nose and whiskers peeking out of the shirt, at my wrist. I called her my Little Sleeve-Dweller.
These rats touched my heart.
There are many alternatives to experimenting on animals. Three American groups with tons of information about this are: the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (www.pcrm.org); the American Anti-Vivisection Society (www.aavs.org); and The New England Anti-Vivisection Society (www.neavs.org). There are also numerous groups in the UK. All of the above groups also list charities that do not experiment on animals. Easter Seals, for example, does only non-animal based research.
I have a few objections to attitudes expressed here and there, like the idea that the “Air Force” Chimps ‘gave their all’ and now deserve to be ‘retired.’ ‘Gave’ implies voluntary activity and these captive chimps were just that, captives, prisoners. A chimp in captivity has had her life taken from her. She didn’t just hop in there and say, “Yes, torture me for medical research!”
Argo implies that medical research on animals has been beneficial for humans, a highly debatable viewpoint. In reality, our sick species has not become any healthier by torturing animals: setting dogs on fire, sewing the eyes of kittens shut, forcing rats to run until they die of exhaustion, engineering mice who are born with cancer—all of this brings in big grants and funds for scientists, but it is not ‘curing’ us of our illnesses. (Please remember that every time you donate to all these breast cancer organizations and all these AIDS research groups, and to charities like the March of Dimes, you are funding animal torture and not necessarily helping humans.)
Argo valorizes the enslaver of Ham, the first chimp NASA forced into space. Ham, all affectionate, is supposedly like a beloved son to this man who used and exploited him. It made me sick to see this poor chimp stuffed into his space capsule, and to imagine the terror he must have felt.
The show does uncover a bit of about the chimps’ tortured lives. We see them tattooed like pieces of equipment, chained in small cages, strapped down with leather as they are injected and experimented upon. We also see crash tests using live chimps and their limp bodies, either dead or fearfully injured, as they are carried from the cars.
But this is only a small glimpse into the torture they’ve endured at our hands. I would like to have seen some of the footage of Jane Goodall’s visits to facilities where chimps, and also monkeys, are housed in cages so small they have gone insane. But I suppose Argo was aware that her audience was the general public, not animal rights activists, and that she could only show so much torture—too much would make the show unwatchable for the average viewer.
A lot of the show focuses on the chimps going to sanctuaries, like Fauna Foundation and Save the Chimps, and this is good. There we see just how damaged the poor animals have been. The camera shows close-ups of their ravaged and mutilated bodies and faces. These chimps look drained of life, and not at all like the vibrant, courageous, bursting-with-energy ones we see in shows that film them in the wild.
Gloria Grow, founder of Fauna Foundation, describes the long-term impact, what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, on these chimps, of having been locked up in small concrete-and-steel spaces for their whole lives. She talks about Billy Jo, a chimp who was experimented on for years at LEMSIP, a New York University research facility. The poor fellow underwent 40 liver biopsies, among other things, and “in the lab,” she says, “he would shake his cage back and forth, trying desperately to prevent anyone from approaching.” In his distress, he also chewed off some of his fingers.
At her sanctuary, he was plagued by anxiety attacks. Sometimes aggressive, at other times caring and gentle, his emotional life was as complex and tortured as that of any human who has suffered.
One concern of the chimps’ sanctuary caretakers has been to give them some peace before they die, since they have endured so much. It is not always easy since the chimps are not just in terrible mental shape, but also plagued by physical problems after years of being tortured in labs. Some only briefly enjoy the freedom of grass and air and sky before they die. It is something, at least, for them to have a few days or months of gentleness and freedom.
The closing scenes of the show are especially touching because we see some of the chimps finally on grass after years of living behind bars in concrete-and-steel cells. There is a Rilke poem about a panther in the zoo who paces constantly and can no longer tell the difference between the bars and the air outside the bars. “It seems to him there are/a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.” One of the chimps at the sanctuary creeps out into the air for the first time in his life. So accustomed is he to concrete, that he is afraid of the grass. He stays on a small strip of sidewalk, right outside his cage door, unable to move across some imaginary line of imprisonment.
Then there is another chimp who does move out, far beyond that line. He goes into the grass, and climbs a tree. There, he spends the night under the moon.
I am glad to see PBS carry a nature/animal show with sensitivity. This one is a good contrast to the scientific series that features Alan Alda. In one episode, Alda visits a scientist who experiments on monkeys. As Alda and the man laugh and joke together, we see the monkeys pacing, pacing, pacing, in the background, in their small cages. Gone insane, long ago.
In another episode, Alda visits a man who has been doing obesity experiments on mice for 30 years, and being handsomely funded to do so, in hopes he will uncover something about overweight humans. (Why he doesn’t just study obese humans, of whom there are many, is a real mystery.)
The same confinement insanity for these poor mice—only maybe worse. With their small, jumpy nervous systems, mice and rats and hamsters (all of these are used in medical experiments) have a much harder time being caged than do humans, or chimps. They go insane faster.
All living creatures want the same things: some of the more obvious necessities are food, safety, space, freedom from pain. I’m glad this show on chimps uncovered the misery they experience in captivity. Now let’s see another Nature episode about how mice and rats and other small animals suffer from their captivity in medical research—how they convulse and bleed from their orifices when injected with lethal substances-- how mice, inflicted congenitally with cancer, carry around tumors bigger than they are; how rats, spinal cords artificially severed, drag themselves around like sad cripples; how hamsters have all their feet amputated so that scientists can discover whether they feel ‘helpless,’ or not, in this pitiful state. (‘Pitiful’ from my point of view; a ‘necessary torture’ from theirs? I don’t know. I do not understand how they think.)
I have some personal experience with rats, having rescued four throwaways at one time, and so I know that they suffer and bleed, and that they also experience joy and pleasure.
I took in four girl rats, brown, because the person who bred them didn’t think they were cute enough to sell as ‘pets’ (that sad word we have labeled some of our captive companions with) and so she was going to dispose of them as snakefood.
I called the girls Wendy, Moira, Angela, and Darling. Wendy was bold and adventurous. Moira was a lazy couch potato, preferring to sleep and eat all the time, instead of exploring all the closets and boxes and other places I gave them as playgrounds. Darling was just that, quite a little darling in that she was the most affectionate of the four. She would groom me by licking my toes and my wrists and corn-rowing my hair with her teeth (rather painful). Angela was perhaps the most endearing of the four because she was very timid. When I wore a long-sleeved shirt, she liked to ride around in it: her furry, warm body would rest against my arm and I could see her nose and whiskers peeking out of the shirt, at my wrist. I called her my Little Sleeve-Dweller.
These rats touched my heart.
There are many alternatives to experimenting on animals. Three American groups with tons of information about this are: the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (www.pcrm.org); the American Anti-Vivisection Society (www.aavs.org); and The New England Anti-Vivisection Society (www.neavs.org). There are also numerous groups in the UK. All of the above groups also list charities that do not experiment on animals. Easter Seals, for example, does only non-animal based research.
Print
Email
